Dongguan: What if They Built a Suburb and Noone Moved In?

Dongguan is one of the major cities on the Pearl River Delta, in Guangdong Province of the People’s Republic of China, aka The Mainland. We are in a suburban area which is mostly empty, with construction of empty condos and shopping centers incessant. This place makes any allegations of Americans causing global warming with their SUVs and BBQs a moot point. Start unearthing asphalt in places like this, where edifices are built for speculation only, and stop bitching about my Lincoln Town Car in Nevada, I say!

Directly across from what Forbes magazine dubs the largest mall in the world, we are not convinced as we hark from the Philippines where mega-malls are truly MEGA and truly MALL. According to Merriam-Webster, a mall is either “an urban shopping area featuring a variety of shops surrounding a usually open-air concourse reserved for pedestrian traffic” or “a usually large suburban building or group of buildings containing various shops with associated passageways”; this place is neither reserved for peds or connected with passageways. To get around, one must hoof it through hundreds of meters of hot asphalt, or cross a busy expressway where crosswalks are merely suggested for the local leadfoot drivers. Additionally, the South China “mall” is mostly vacant, and those stores that do have merchandise are locked in darkened corridors with no sales staff in sight. Hands down, the ShoeMarts in the Philippines still hold the title of the world’s largest shopping malls.

More exciting than the faux world’s-largest-mall is the METRO, a single coop built in one building, where membership fees keep the cost down for everybody. If this sounds familiar it’s because it’s just like Costco in the States. This is a much greener alternative, and hella fun to push a cart around in looking for everyday practical items for cheap. And so what if it’s air-conned; half the fun is leaving the hot pavement of the South China Mall to browse in a refrigerator full of bargains.

July 12, 2007